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Capital increasingly takes the form of intangible assets, especially trademarked corporate brands. Further, contemporary capitalism increasingly accumulates through commodification of iconic cultural images and legendary narratives constituting a “second enclosure movement” (Boyle, 2008). This paper develops a critical theory of brands, branding, and brand management within economies of spectacle.

A case study of the consumer culture surrounding large displacement motorcycling is used to critique the central premise of consumer culture theory (marketing professionals create brands that become valuable icons) and develop an alternative view using concepts from critical theory, especially spectacle (Debord, 1967) and culture industry (Adorno, 1991).

After initial enclosure, legends were managed by Crossmarketing Licensing Networks (CMLN), coalitions of corporate and state actors, each possessing a piece of the legendary pie. The Sturgis CMLN was organized into two political divisions, rally profiteers and civic leaders, with overlapping but differentiated interests and approaches to the management of the Sturgis legend. The CMLN intervened in the cultural commons to overcome legendary degradations (banality, incoherence, undesirability) surrounding the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

Brands are capitalized culture created by enclosures, a form of primitive accumulation. Under current conditions of immaterial production, CMLN’s engage in ongoing cultural production to maintain the capitalized value of their brands. Brands are not only hunted in the wilds of culture, but also increasingly domesticated and fattened when herded through legendary commons.

This study explores the simultaneous transitions in Palestine/Israel and South Africa at the end of the 20th century through an analysis of the shifting geography of Johannesburg and Jerusalem. After analyzing the relationship between political, economic and spatial restructuring, I examine the walled enclosures that mark the landscapes of post-apartheid Johannesburg and post-Oslo Jerusalem. I conclude by arguing that these walled enclosures reveal several interconnected aspects of the relationship between neo-liberal restructuring and the militarization of urban space. They also exemplify different configurations of sovereignty under conditions of neo-liberalism and empire.

The archaeological record of small-scale societies is replete with examples of people expending considerable labor to craft both places and objects for communal rituals. Archaeologists often infer these efforts to have been the product of aspiring elites. This chapter focuses instead on the larger community responsible for the construction of places and objects, through a ritual economy analysis of the social logic people use to organize the production of ritual places and paraphernalia. A review of ethnographic and archaeological data suggests that the production of communal ritual places often involves the creation of sociograms, while the production of objects for use within these places encompasses a web of complementary and competitive relations. Two examples of large-scale communal ritual spaces, the early British Neolithic causewayed enclosures and the Ohio Hopewell geometric earthworks, are explored in light of these ethnographic and archaeological patterns.

Using the case of the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, I argue that the catastrophe was less an example of a low probability-high catastrophe event than an instance of socially produced risks and insecurities associated with deepwater oil and gas production during the neoliberal period after 1980. The disaster exposes the deadly intersection of the aggressive enclosure of a new technologically risky resource frontier (the deepwater continental shelf) with what I call a frontier of neoliberalized risk, a lethal product of cut-throat corporate cost-cutting, the collapse of government oversight and regulatory authority and the deepening financialization and securitization of the oil market. These two local pockets of socially produced risk and wrecklessness have come to exceed the capabilities of what passes as risk management and energy security. In this sense, the Deepwater Horizon disaster was produced by a set of structural conditions, a sort of rogue capitalism, not unlike those which precipitated the financial meltdown of 2008. The forms of accumulation unleashed in the Gulf of Mexico over three decades rendered a high-risk enterprise yet more risky, all the while accumulating insecurities and radical uncertainties which made the likelihood of a Deepwater Horizon type disaster highly overdetermined.

A new database demonstrates that between 1600 and 1830, Parliament passed thousands of acts restructuring rights to real and equitable estates. These estate acts enabled individuals and families to sell, mortgage, lease, exchange, and improve land previously bound by landholding and inheritance laws. This essay provides a factual foundation for research on this important topic: the law and economics of property rights during the period preceding the Industrial Revolution. Tables present time-series, cross-sectional, and panel data that should serve as a foundation for empirical analysis. Preliminary analysis indicates ways in which this new evidence may shape our understanding of British economic and social history. The data demonstrate that Parliament facilitated the reallocation of resources to new and more productive uses by adapting property rights to modern economic conditions. Reallocation surged in the decades following the Glorious Revolution and was concentrated in areas undergoing urbanization and industrialization. The process was open to landowners of all classes, not just the privileged groups who sat in the Houses of Lords and Commons. Parliament's rhetoric about improving the realm appears to have been consistent with its actions concerning rights to land and resources.

Public space is a multilayered phenomenon associated with accessibility, comprehensiveness, equal citizenship, and as representing/building democracy. Founded on Henri Lefebvre’s (1974/1991) definition, space is both a product and a precondition of the social processes. Moreover, public space comes to the fore as a multilayered spatial scene. This scene enables us to examine various manifestations of intervention, negotiation, freedom, struggle, or oppression through daily life routines, mass demonstrations, or preclusions. The inherent specificity of public space also represents the struggle for/on space clearly. By exploring the rooted meaning and function of public space, this study focuses on the imprisonment of space as a manifestation of power.

This chapter approaches the notion of imprisonment of space in two main ways. Firstly, the word “imprisonment” is used metaphorically to define the urban or architectural practices of the government, which have the power to transform the daily use and the symbolic meaning of public spaces. For instance, establishing or destroying symbolic or representative buildings adjacent to a public space creates empty and uncomfortable spaces where people only pass by. Secondly, the notion of “imprisonment” is used literally to define the way access to public spaces is blocked by building temporary or permanent barriers, as is done by the police for crime scene investigations.

This study aims to exemplify the imprisonment of public space through two current urban practices from Istanbul, Turkey. The first case regards two much-debated buildings: the construction of a mosque and the reconstruction of a cultural center, facing each other. The space between them remains a void where, in the past, many public demonstrations occurred which has attributed to this area a symbolic meaning in the collective memory of the city. The second case regards an urban square that is well known due to sit-in protests of the Saturday Mothers movement since 1995. To prevent sit-in protests from continuing, this square has been surrounded by temporary security barriers, vehicles, and military forces since 2018, making this location a literal example of an imprisoned public space. By discussing these two cases, this chapter illustrates how spatial interventions such as blocking or emptying of public spaces are not just conducted to prevent a claim of civic demands, but also to erase the collective memory connected to these areas. For this reason, these interventions should be discussed on their short- and long-term effects in order to build a powerful public reclaiming of space.